Westboro Baptist Church’s own Reverend Fred Phelps (Graphic: mine)
Ten years ago this week, in the early morning hours of 7 October 1998, gay student Matthew Shepard was robbed, beaten, tortured, and left to die tied to a fence in a snowy desolate area outside of Laramie, Wyoming. 18 hours later, his body, still barely alive but in a coma, was discovered by a cyclist. Matthew was taken to a hospital and died on 12 October.
Information about Matthew Shepard’s life, death and planned commemorations can be found at the Matthew Shepard Foundation website.
Sadly, Matthew’s tragic story is but one of countless other reported and unreported, devastating tales of violence, cruelty and murder directed against gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and queer identified people in this country and around the world. Each year the number of incidents continues to increase. In November of 2007, the FBI reported that hate crimes based on sexual orientation were the third most common type, behind race and religion — almost exclusively Jews and Muslims.
The Reverend Fred Phelps (depicted above) and his hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church infamously picketed Matthew Shepard’s funeral. Phelps, unsuccessfully, attempted to have a public monument installed bearing the inscription “Matthew Shepard, entered Hell October 12, 1998, in defiance of God’s warning: ‘Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; it is abomination.’ Leviticus 18:22.” Phelps and his church went on to demonstrate again and again at the funerals of people who had died of AIDS complications, well known GLBT individuals, and eventually American war dead.
While the backers of California’s Proposition 8 have disingenuously attempted to position their push for a Constitutional amendment banning marriage equality as “preserving marriage” (and not outright gay-bashing), these hate-filled, religious fanatics are cut from precisely the same faith-based cloth as Westboro Baptist Church’s own Reverend Fred Phelps. Do not be fooled. Their bigotry is no different than the Bible-thumping bigotry that maintains: “God Hates Fags.”
With a month to go before Election Day, it’s vital that anyone who believes it is wrong to enshrine discrimination in the California Constitution get involved now. Talk openly to your family, friends and co-workers; sign up to volunteer; and, if you have the wherewithal, donate to keep the campaign against hate alive and fighting.
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The vast majority of Americans in American history(including those who voted for the Fourteenth Amendment) believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.
I side with them.
The “vast majority” of Americans also, at one time, believed that relationships between persons of different races (miscegenation) were immoral, inappropriate and should be illegal. California led the fight against this bigotry and, in 1967, the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Loving v. Virginia that miscegenation laws are unconstitutional.
Nobody is asking any church to bless a same-sex relationship. This is a civil matter, despite the flood of lies from the radical religious right.
If the so-called “religious” were sincerely interested in “protecting marriage,” they would have proposed a constitutional amendment banning divorce and adultery.